Joshua Close is up close & personal with a zombie in DIARY OF THE DEAD(2008).
© The Weinstein Company
Maniac Grade: B+
Title: Diary of the Dead
Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
Rating: R
Starring: Michelle Morgan, Josh Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Lalonde, Joe Dinicol, Scott Wentworth, Philip Riccio, Chris Violette, Tatiana Maslany
Written By: George A. Romero
Directed By: George A. Romero
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
DIARY OF THE DEAD
By: Abbie Bernstein, ColumnistDate: Friday, February 15, 2008
Not that anybody needs a license for it in any case, but if there’s an individual who’s entitled to do whatever he wants with the living dead genre, it’s George A. Romero. Romero (for those who know zilch about horror film history) created a whole new subgenre with Night of the Living Dead in 1968 and subsequently expanded on the mythology with Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005), with each film exploring a different stage in the survival (or lack thereof) of civilization under siege by flesh-eating human corpses. The idea has since been borrowed by horror filmmakers everywhere, including two not-very-good remakes of Night and the excellent 2004 remake of Dawn.
Now writer/director Romero is visiting the fertile graveyard yet again, but this time, rather than envisioning how people eventually adapt to defending themselves from zombies, he’s starting over. Diary of the Dead takes place just as the world – specifically, a group of college film students armed with a video camera – begin to take note of the increasing carnage.
Diary takes the framing device of presenting itself as footage under the title “The Death of Death,” edited for Internet presentation by Debra (Michelle Morgan), who introduces what we’re about to see as largely the work of Jason Greene (Josh Close). When we first meet Jason, he’s trying to direct a student scare flick in the woods outside Pittsburgh, featuring a mummy with poorly attached makeup who’s walking too fast (a joke that allows Romero to take a friendly swipe at the running zombies in the Dawn remake). Between takes, Jason’s crew tunes in the news on wireless Internet and hear enough alarming reports that they decide to head for home. Most of them pile into the camper that’s served as on-set base of operations. Of course, the road – and everything off it – is increasingly full of the walking dead. Rather than freaking out, Jason decides to document the journey.
With Diary, Romero actually has a good deal to say about the video age and how people can use reporting on a situation as a means of psychologically insulating themselves from feeling as though they’re directly involved. He also has a few things to day about how a crisis can bring out the absolute worst as well as the best in some people, but gets onto shaky philosophical ground when he tries to tie the two themes loosely together.
On the straightforward living dead front, though, Romero is at the top of his game. The video footage never looks too good to be what it is, but the director avoids the shaky-cam technique that has been an issue for some Cloverfield viewers. The gore level is what can reasonably be expected in a Dead film. There’s no self-mockery – there isn’t a great deal of humor once things get serious, but what laughs there are come honestly and powerfully (there’s one encounter with a civilian that by rights should spawn t-shirts). The characters are bright and adaptive, given good dialogue and understandable reactions. The performances are all very good, with Morgan, Close and Scott Wentworth as their alcoholic professor all particularly notable. There’s also an onscreen cameo from Boyd Banks, who was in both the Dawn remake and Romero’s Land of the Dead, and audio contributions from Stephen King, Simon Pegg and filmmakers Wes Craven, Guillermo Del Toro and Quentin Tarantino as the voices of newscasters.
Diary of the Dead is immensely satisfying and proof that a filmmaker can, narratively speaking, go home again.
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